“What? Oh, no, not at all. Iwantedto kiss you. It’s more about kissing while we’re doing a public scene. I just… honestly, I’m afraid it’ll make me do something I might not do otherwise. In public, that is,” she said with a shy smile. “In private is completely different.”
He nodded, smiling back at her, loving that she’d told him she wanted to kiss him. He loved that she was so open with him, that she felt she could be. “I get that. And just know I would never push you to do anything that hasn’t been approved by you through negotiations, in public or when it’s just the two of us.”
He did get it. If he had her half naked under his hands, kissing her could cause him to lose all control of the situation. Of himself. And he didn’t want to do that to her, to blow her trust right out of the gate. But good lord, he was going to be tempted.
“So,” he continued, “we’ll start out easy. We both need to gauge where your pain tolerance is at, since it’s been a while since you’ve played hard. I need you to promise me that you’ll be honest about the pace that feels good to you. Use your safe words as needed. If you call red, we’ll stop right away and talk about it right then—to your comfort level, of course. Or, if I think you’re too far gone in subspace, I’ll use my judgment to understand if you’re in a place to have that kind of conversation—then we’d talk it through when you’ve had time to come down and are grounded in your body.”
“I have to say, I really like that you’re sort of… being a bit careful with me as we go into this. It feels like respect. And caretaking. And I think I need that right now.”
“You absolutely do. But I need it, too. And on that note, now we negotiate aftercare. You said in the questionnaire that you need it every time you play, but tell me what that looks like for you.”
“Well, physical contact is really big for me.”
“Like cuddling?” he asked, a surge of need to pull her into his lap right then and there rushing through him, an insistent sort of desire that was as much about comfort as it was the chemistry between them. How sweet would it be to hold her in his lap?
“Yes,” she answered. “That’s exactly what I need. If that’s okay?”
“Hell, yeah, it is.”
“Really?” she asked, her eyes big and full of hope.
“Yeah, of course. I wouldn’t have said it otherwise. But also, I need aftercare. I need that physical touch. I need to know if I’ve done a good job, or if I haven’t.”
“Do you? Kenny never wanted aftercare. He never really wanted to offer it to me, although at times he did it, anyway, if I asked for it. But it always felt so insincere. It’s only more recently that I’ve learned Dominants ever required aftercare. I always thought it was for the bottom’s sake.”
He shrugged. “We’re human, too. We’re not made out of stone just because we’re the ones who are responsible for the bottom’s or submissive’s experience. In fact, I need aftercarebecauseI’m the one responsible for how the scene goes.”
“That actually makes a lot of sense, now that you’ve explained it to me.”
He rested his elbows on the table and leaned closer. “It’s sort of a well-kept secret in kink circles—and it shouldn’t be. These myths have grown up around this completely manufactured stereotype of what a Top or a Dom is ‘supposed’ to be. But again, we’re human. And some of those who say they don’t need aftercare, and especially those who don’t want to give it, are sometimes too shut down to be honest about their needs. They buy into the myths. Not all Tops and Doms, of course, but a lot of them, which is something I’m finding out more about the more education I do.
“It took me a while to find out I wasn’t alone in that need, especially because I always had to be so careful about where I was seen when I was still actively playing football. It wouldn’t have been smart to let the news get out that I was visiting dungeons, so a lot of what I learned was from books and videos, and online classes I took while I was still mostly practicing kink at home. But once I had access to kink community, the information flooded in. There are a lot of other kinksters who developed their ideas around BDSM in a lonely bubble. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to go into education.”
“I can imagine it wouldn’t have gone over well with your team or your fans if it was made public that you were kinky. It must have been hard to keep it a secret.”
“Yeah, sometimes. But a lot of people have to keep it to themselves, or simply prefer not to scene in public, so I managed. But things are so much better now that I get to be who I am.”
“Yes, I’m finding that, too,” she said, a smile lighting up her lovely face.
“So, any questions for me?”
“Yes. Yes, but not specifically about us playing together, if that’s okay?”
“You can ask me anything you want. I’m an open book.”
“I was wondering about your last regular play partner. Was it a relationship, or…?”
“Yeah, it was. Her name was Peyton. We dated for about six months, but that was almost two years ago, right after the last time I saw you. I haven’t been really involved with anyone since. I’ve dated a bit, did some pickup play at the clubs, played with friends. But there are some forms of play I don’t do outside of a relationship, which I wanted to mention, because you answered that knife play was a maybe. That’s not something I do until and unless I’m involved with someone. I need to know trust has been established on both sides to be comfortable going there. Trust and a real sense of closeness.”
“That makes sense to me. I’d have to have a very high level of trust built over time.”
“Exactly. So we table that. For now.”
Chapter Six
Claudia watched him as he spoke, realizing not only from his words, but from the subtle shifts in his expression, that he truly had a sensitive side. He wasn’t the kind of man to go to extremes with any random play partner, and she respected that about him.
“You know, this is so outside the realm of my experience, which has been fairly limited,” she told him. “I’ve only ever practiced kink in a relationship with Kenny. Everyone else has just been a friend. So, I really don’t know what it will take for me to get to where I can do something like that. But I think I’d like to find out someday.”
